Better care for attractive babies?

I think this is a good example of why you should consider the info given when a new study comes out. They showed men and women pictures of babies and let them push a button to change the picture and drew conclusions from how long each sex looked at attractive and facially deformed babies. This study concludes that "Our study shows how beauty can affect parental attitudes," study senior author Dr. Igor Elman says in a news release, "It shows women are more invested in raising healthy babies and that they are more prone to reject unattractive kids."
They neglect to account for parental bias towards their own children, or the fact that women are MORE sensitive towards an abnormal baby and that could explain them changing the picture quickly. (That quirky nose-well it's adorable cause it comes from the baby's father! And people are more prone to see beauty in a child that resembles them, even if objective people don't see the child as beautiful.
I agree with the commentor that says, "
CLM 6-29-2009 @ 1:39PM
Was this even peer-reviewed before being released? I hate to make sexist judgments, but I can't help but note the lead researcher is male, and frankly the conclusions of the researchers seem to reflect their own biases rather than the results of the data. It's a pretty unscientific leap on their part. As indicated by other posters here, there is clearly more than one possibility for the results. Something the researchers do not appear to have controlled for (sorry about the dangling participle)."

A robot Cake

Cute. Young Julian shows how to make a robot cake.

I second this one!

A post from Momalom on the fact that there is great advice out there for parents of one baby. But once you add an extra baby or two......the standard advice just doesn't apply. I noticed that a long time ago myself!!

A quote:
"To parent is to evaluate. All day long. Evaluate situations. Needs. Your needs. The kids’ needs. Each individual child’s needs. And if there is more than one child? How everyone’s needs may affect everyone else’s. And I have yet to find a book—or a magazine article—that addresses this."

Art Project

Note the paint in his EAR

The water was all blue, largly from his hair.

You can see the paint running down his neck, there was just so much!

So the other day-wed. or Thurs. I think- I was all excited to to do a craft project with the kids. I'd been browsing a crafty Moma's blog ( Soule Mama) and was feeling all inspired and really it's been too long since we've done something like that. I think we were all needing to be creative. So I made sure the kitchen was clean, particularly the floor since I planned on useing that too. And I got out all our painting stuff, my Mom got the kids some sponge roller tools for Easter and we hadn't even opened them yet. I taped down some paper off our butcher roll of paper (I got ours through Tony's but I think most grocery stores will order one for you if you ask. They're a lot of fun.) on the table, put on some music and got everyone out there. I've learned to just put the paint on paper plates for them to use it from because it's easier to clean up that way. I had visions of everybody painting these pretty, most likely abstract paintings.......I had hopes of maybe even painting myself.

I expect a mess. I know everyone will need a bath and I'll be cleaning the table, chairs and sink. I did not expect to be cleaning the floor five times in one day. Hands and knees cleaning the floor. Plus spot cleaning a few times as well. And cleaning the walls, the entire front of the fridge, two window sills, the butcher table Tom made me, and the walls by the sink. That doesn't even come close to describing the mess.

The boys, particularly Justin, still just love to just splash the paint on, layer over layer. They're happy just with the feeling of it on their hands.

Jacob did well, and eventually fell asleep. When he woke up I plopped him right in the tub. He was not happy with this and I had to calm him down a bit afterwards. I had Timothy and Justin get in and bathe while I calmed Jacob down. I did not expect the two of them to decide to go back downstairs and paint some more while I was lying there with Jacob. I did not expect them to just pour paint out, right on the floor. It was splattered everywhere. Someone had painted overtop of Leanna's beach picture that was drying on the table (we were going to glue some foam sea creatures from CVS on top of it when it dried). Timothy had a large patch of paint on the top back of his hair. When I found this lovely scene I set Jacob in the living room and started cleaning as quickly as I could. I had to hurry and clean the bottoms of their feet before they went out towards the living room carpet. And keep them from re-dirtying their feet by stepping in any of the paint puddles on the floor. The sink was a sea of blue. While I tackled the mess Jacob came back out and before I could grab him, he'd wandered smack into the middle of the giant paint puddle on the floor! He started slipping and fell. Crying again, he attempted to get up but kept slipping in the paint/paper mess. I had to grab him and he was clinging to my legs as I tried to get all the paint up as fast as I could. I was covered in paint as well, without even painting myself. I did a passable job on the kitchen and then had to run Jacob and Timothy back up to the tub. I didn't even get a chance to give Leanna a bath yet! It took me the rest of the day to finish cleaning the mess up from this little project. I always have this idea of how things will be and get very dissapointed when it doesn't work out. I ddidn't expect it to be perfect. I'm still working on that whole expectations thing......being able to adjust them in order to be a happy person. Yeah, I'm still working on it. At least the kids had fun. : )

Art Project

This one's from midway through.....you can see he's grabbed at the widowsill and he's pulled his sister's pencil box near him, paint's just too fun to waste it only on paper!

Completely conked out in his seat, covered in paint.

I love this picture of him carefully painting his fingers!

At first he was doing great.

Even Jacob participated in this project. I strapped him in his seat and gave him some scrap paper and a brush and let him play. And I was very lucky that he actually did amuse himself with the paints for a while. Then he got really tired-it was nap time-and he fell asleep in his chair. That was perfect for me because it meant when he woke up he couldn't just come out and walk into a mess before I noticed he was up......he was already strapped into the chiar! It should have worked that way anyway.

Art Project

These two picutures are the beginning of the last stage of our painting project(Sorry, I don't control which pictures blogger puts up first). I put paper on the floor for Justin and Timothy and you can see that the paint is starting to leave the paper and decorate the floor. And their bodies. And then Jacob woke up and I had to clean him up.

The middle stage of our project looked like this.......starting to use more than just the paper, mixing colors.....still ok by me, they're just having fun and useing their imaginations.

In the beginning even Justin was just nicely painting his paper.

We started out like this picture.....everyone at the table, painting nicely.

A Mother's Hierarchy of Needs

For full explanation, go here

(I'd have to agree, missing some of the basics for an extended period of time does impair your happiness!)

More Strawberry stuff

The rabbit enjoys the tops of the strawberries (we got almost 10 pounds)

Pictures of the sky (Justin actually took this one)

Plump juicy strawberries-it's amazing how beautiful they look. As you're out there picking them they really are very pretty to look at among the green leaves and with the blue sky backdrop.

We had more fun last year.....this year Justin was done after about three minutes. He said he had to go to the bathroom and he wanted to go home. The plants and straw were sratching his legs! He was hot! Timothy was less bothered but he likes to copy Justin, so he started complaining too. Justin's been going through a weird phase lately, he's just very shy and easily bothered by things. And Jacob just wanted me to hold him, making it very difficult to pick anything. Lucky for me, Leanna is a champion strawberry picker! She made up for the boys and picked most of our strawberries. Seiple Farm is just beautiful, hopefully next year we'll be better prepared and go earlier and have better attitudes. Strawberries really do taste better fresh and warm with the sun! Leanna and I enjoyed it, and to a lesser extent, Timothy and Jacob too! Justin enjoyed a stop at Wendy's afterwards with a frosty. Ah well.

Seiple Farm-Strawberries!!

Timothy and Jacob's hands-both were red from picking strawberries but Jacob turned his hand over right before I took the picture.

The best part about picking your own is that you get to eat as many as you want, and they taste delicious!!!

Unless you get a sour one, but that doesn't happen very often in the field!

Leanna, hair blowing in the wind, strawberry stains on her face!

Seiple Farm-Strawberry Picking Again!

I may be the only one, but I see Nanny Sue in this picture of Timothy.

Timothy showing his finds.

Five Years Old!!

Happy Birthday to my FIVE YEAR OLD! Man did he grow fast!!

More problems here!

We lost our computer for a couple days. I couldn't even turn it on and was worried that we lost everything. No idea what was wrong but he put the hard drive in another computer, found a few errors, and now it works again. So yay, today I'm back again!

No great father's day stories-Tom's been sick. He got sick on Monday, the day after we came home from the wedding, and really he's still sick but he did go back to work yesterday. So he got Father's Day cards,-but we went next door to visit with my Dad, I figured the peace and quiet might be the best father's day present I could give him with the way he was feeling!

Literary Stuff

A page in the library book Gone With The Wand (a very cute book by the way) so that everyone who checks out the book will see her name. It's one of the prizes she won in the summer reading club for reading books.

*I'm reading Leanna (and sometimes the boys too) Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. (the first Little House on the Prairie book) I'm enjoying it too!
I didn't remember that the book starts out with a description of how they store food for the winter. Yuck! I'm glad I don't have to make head cheese and cook pig parts and such.

*Leanna's currently reading/finishing FishFace by Patricia Reilly Giff

*We had our best library trip yet on Saturday, but that was largely due to Maree' being with us. She took Jacob and pushed him around and read to him while I stayed with the boys and we reported their five books read. It also helped that we didn't stick around to pick out new books.

*Justin is really into rhyming words right now, and Timothy copies him. He's starting to get it right about a quarter of the time now, LOL, I admire his perserverance! It doesn't bother him one bit that he doesn't get it right most of the time.

*Jacob sometimes grabs a book and "reads" now.

Jacob

At 23 months old.

He was just hanging out in the window, and looked cute.

Cookie Mix

Jacob kept attacking the finished product (every time I turned around he was back on top of the table!) You can see from the odd shapes that some cookies did stick together, despite my efforts-see below!

I tried to teach them about spacing the cookies out so they don't cook together.....not too bad.

All three were involved in the process!

I should really make them some boy aprons!

Mixing was hard work!

Jacob really wanted to eat it, why wait??

Timothy had a hard time not eating the M&Ms right away too!

Nanny Sue gave us a cookie mix in a jar (and also Cappuccino in a jar!) and I've been meaning to make the cookies with the kids for forever!! It's just sort of been one thing after another here, but we finally got around to doing it. Leanna was busy helping Grammy clean her storage room at the time (gotta get ready for Aunt Laura moving back in!) so it was just me & my boys.

I have to say, by the time we made these cookies, there were quite a bit fewer M&Ms and some of the mix was lost from little hands sneaking the M&Ms! So it didn't make quite as many cookies, nor were there as many sweet bits to the cookies. No matter, they enjoyed them just the same!! Thank you Nanny Sue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two birthday presents

Appropriately enough, presents from both grandmothers. First is Leanna with two of her three Cabbage Patch kids-the one with lots of hair is her birthday present from Nanny Sue. (The other one pictured is a baby Cabbage Patch that I got her the Christmas after Timothy was born so she'd have a baby to take care of too. And the third, not picured, was one I got for $5.00 at a thrift store while I was pregnant with Leanna. I knew I was having a girl and when I saw it I couldn't resist getting the baby one!)

And here is a Rose from Leanna's trip to the Farmer's Market with Grammy and Aunt Cindy on her birthday. Very pretty.

Still not sure about when/if we're doing a party this year........I'd really really hate not to, but we just may not be able to swing it this year.

Free paint

Starting June 25th it will have details here for a free quart of Glidden paint.

Glidden is celebrating the launch of their new paint by offering consumers a FREE quart of Glidden Paint starting June 25th through July 2nd.
Choose from 282 colors!
(Thanks, Money Saving Madness!)

Eight Years Old!!!

Eight years ago I was a little over an hour away from giving birth for the first time! That tiny little girl, not even six pounds at birth, changed absolutely everything. It's still amazing to think about. Happy Birthday Leanna!

I can relate

What happens after Happily Ever After? Fallen Princesses

The kids

As you can see in the pictures, the kids weren't too into it. Their outfits were all donated to us by Aunt Karen. And they looked adorable. Three little suits and Leanna's dress was like a mini wedding dress. If she had worn a smile with it, it would have been stunning.

These are from the portion where they call all kids 12 and under up and give them candy. The three of them just sat there in a row, quietly. The candy did perk them up a bit, mainly the boys. The pictures of Jacob are from later in the night when he was a bit silly.

People pictures

The happy couple

Tom and Betsy, she was very happy too

Chrissy and Tom

Dancing with his trademark hat, he couldn't even leave it at home on his wedding day!

Four cousins:Laura, Betsy, Tracy, and me

Wedding Reception

Laura and Betsy (sister of the Bride)

just after tossing the flowers

their first dance

during the toast

The reception didn't start until 5:00. Apparently it's common there for there to be a gap between the ceremony and reception, most people just go home for a few hours in between. We checked into a hotel, since we couldn't just drive home. It's funny, after the brouhaha during my grandmother's funeral, I was worried about the kids getting rambunctious. They were the exact opposite! For the most part, they just sat there, bored and somewhat listless. With the exception of Jacob, who wouldn't stop crying and fussing for me. My arms were so tired from holding him. He did NOT want to sit in a high chair for hours after doing all that driving! They had a female DJ who had a spiel going for a while so I had to keep Jacob quiet. And a lady one table over from us kept shooting me dirty looks when Jacob made noise. The car-ride and then having to sit and be quiet was just too much for him, I did my best. I left with him several times that night. But as soon as we returned he was fussy again. He didn't fall asleep til the final 45 minutes of the night!